Prose Recall Research Articles

Adult age differences in elaborations produced during prose recall.

This study focused on adult age differences in the characteristics and quantity of elaborations produced during a prose recall task. Young (M = 24.3 years) and older (M = 67.9 years) adults were tested in 3 same-age, same-gender group size conditions: individual, dyad, and tetrad. Elaborations, which are statements not contained in the text but not inconsistent with it, were divided into 2 major categories. Denotative elaborations included statements that were closely related to the text and filled in gaps in the stories. These elaborations were equally produced by young and older adults and were significantly correlated with gist recall performance. Annotative elaborations were evaluative and interpretive comments. These statements were more frequently produced by older adults but were not correlated with recall performance. Young and older adults had different patterns of annotative elaboration production across group size conditions.

The Assets of the Mentally Handicapped: The Interplay of Mental Illness and Creativity

The Assets of the Mentally Handicapped: The Interplay of Mental Illness and CreativityFrieda Fromm-Reichmann and Ann-Louise S. SilverFrieda Fromm-ReichmannMedical Staff, Chestnut Lodge Hospital (Rockville, Maryland), Instructor, Extension Program, Washington Psychoanalytic Institute; Clinical Associate Professor, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences; Faculty, Washington School of Psychiatry.Search for more papers by this author and Ann-Louise S. SilverMedical Staff, Chestnut Lodge Hospital (Rockville, Maryland), Instructor, Extension Program, Washington Psychoanalytic Institute; Clinical Associate Professor, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences; Faculty, Washington School of Psychiatry.Chestnut Lodge, 500 West Montgomery Avenue, Rockville, MD 20850Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:July 2017https://doi.org/10.1521/jaap.1.1990.18.1.47PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations AboutReferencesAnonymous (by a late inmate of the Glasgow Royal Asylum for Lunatics at Gartnavel) (1947), The Philosophy of Insanity; with an Introduction by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, M.D., Greenberg, New York. Google ScholarBeers C. (1948), A Mind That Found Itself, Doubleday, New York. Google ScholarBoisen A. (1936), The Exploration of the Inner World: A Study of Mental Disorder and Religious Experience, Willett, Clark and Co., Chicago. Google ScholarBrown C. (1944), Brainstorm, Farrar and Rinehart, New York. Google ScholarFromm E. (1941), Escape from Freedom, Rinehart and Co., New York. Google ScholarFromm-Reichmann F. (1959), Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: Selected Papers, Bullard D. M., Ed., University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Google ScholarGoldstein K. (1939), The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man, American Book Co., New York. Crossref, Google ScholarHilliard J. (1926), Reluctantly Told, Macmillan, New York. Google ScholarNijinsky Romola de Pulszky (1934), Nijinsky, Simon & Schuster, New York. Google ScholarPeters F. (1949), The World Next Door, Farrar, Strauss & Co., New York. Google ScholarWard M. J. (1946), The Snake Pit, Random House, New York. Google Scholar Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Cited byCited by1. “Under the black sun of the silence, the words burned slowly” (Pizarnik) use of literature in a therapeutic group in a closed psychiatric ward – as a creative way to return to recovery processOnline publication date: 22 August 2022. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar2. Treating Dissociative and Psychotic Disorders PsychodynamicallyOnline publication date: 19 November 2018. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar3. Beyond countertransference: Therapists’ experiences in clinical relationships with patients diagnosed with schizophreniaOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google ScholarAnn–Louise S. Silver4. In the Footsteps of Arieti and Fromm–Reichmann: Psychodynamic Treatments of Psychosis in the Current EraOnline publication date: 31 January 2006. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar5. A Prothalamion to the Wedding of Inspiration and PerspirationOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar6. Induced poetry and prose recall: A transfer of the induced song recall techniqueOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google ScholarKathryn J. Zerbe7. The Phoenix Rises from Eros, Not Ashes: Creative Collaboration in the Lives of Five Impressionist and Postimpressionist Women ArtistsOnline publication date: 13 July 2017. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar Volume 18Issue 1Mar 1990 Information© 1990 by The American Academy of PsychoanalysisPDF download

Individual differences in the effects of time of day and passage difficulty on prose memory in adults

The study under report examined the effects of time of day on prose recall in morning‐ and evening‐type individuals. Subjects listened to two easy and two difficult passages at either 09.00, 14.00 or 20.00. Immediately after listening to a taperecorded version of each story, subjects were asked to write their recalls. The results indicated that recall decreased across time of day for morning types but increased for evening types. The effects of importance level were similar for passages at both difficulty levels at all times of day; however, time‐of‐day effects were largest for highly important‐idea units from difficult passages.The results demonstrated that time of day influences immediate recall of prose in adults, and the pattern of these effects depended upon whether the subject was a morning or evening type. It was suggested that subsequent examinations of time of day and prose memory should utilize concurrent measures of encoding effort to assess whether processing strategies change across time of day.

MEMORY IN MIDDLE‐AGED ADULTS

In this article we review the literature on memory in middle‐aged adults, focusing on the place of memory in development from young adulthood through old age. We examine the areas of free recall, cued recall, recognition, and prose recall as well as the issues of automaticity and strategy use. The overall findings reveal a steady decline in memory performance; some areas, such as recognition and prose recall, show less decline than others. Task variables that affect the middle‐aged adult's performance in laboratory tasks are noted, and some pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed. This review was supported by a grant from the College of Arts and Sciences of Florida International University to Gordon E. Finley.

The recall of prose as a function of importance following closed head injury

Closed head injury (CHI) results in significant memory dysfunction. Although the disabling aspects of memory impairment after CHI have been recognized, little attention has been focused on the theoretical nature of these memory problems. A means of examining semantic sensitivity to the importance of the ideas presented in the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised Logical Memory subtest was developed. Subjects with CHI were sensitive to the semantic structure of the stories, but lost more important information at a faster rate than controls. Differences in recall, dependent on the passage, suggested that the two stories in the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised are not equivalent.

Effects of Vocabulary Difficulty and Text Length on Word Definition and Prose Recall

Abstract The effects of vocabulary and text length on the reader's ability to infer the meanings of words from their context and to recall factual content were examined. Adult subjects (N = 136) read easy- or difficult-vocabulary versions of connected prose on unfamiliar topics. Both easy and difficult passages were varied in length by the deletion of low level propositions. Readers provided fewer correct English synonyms for two-syllable nonwords when passages contained difficult vocabulary; there was no main effect of text length and no interaction. Fact recall tended to be reduced when difficult vocabulary passages were shortened by removal of propositions, however. Results are discussed in terms of differences in task demands.

Effects of concreteness and task context on recall of prose among bilingual and monolingual speakers

The presence of concreteness effects on recall of prose paragraphs was shown to depend on the language experience of the subjects, the nature of the task, and whether subjects were given both concrete and abstract passages. In Experiment 1, monolingual and bilingual subjects recalled both abstract and concrete English paragraphs following comprehension instructions. Although no overall difference in recall was found, monolinguals showed a large concreteness effect but bilinguals showed only a marginal one. In Experiment 2, the concreteness effect for monolinguals was eliminated by presenting only abstract or concrete paragraphs to a given subject. In Experiment 3, after rating the imageability of individual sentences within abstract and concrete paragraphs, both language groups showed a large concreteness effect in recall. Concreteness effects can thus be obtained in recall of prose, tied not to differences in how abstract and concrete words are represented, but to how the prose is both encoded and retrieved. It is suggested that for bilinguals, the language of prose can act as a context specifier.

The effects of depression on structural aspects of the recall of prose.

The effects of depression on structural aspects of the recall of prose.

The effect of outlines and headings on readers' recall of text

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effects of outlines prefacing text and headings inserted in the text on readers' recall of prose. The results of Experiment 1 with artificial text and Experiment 2 with an actual textbook chapter indicated that outlines and headings each had a facilitative effect on readers' recall. Further, a combined condition in which both headings and outlines accompanied text resulted in the greatest overall levels of recall. Experiment 3 examined the effects of headings and outlines on readers' ability to reorder statements taken from the text. Students who read outlines prior to the text performed significantly better on the reordering task than students in any of the other conditions. Headings apparently had no effect on readers' ability to reorder statements taken from text. The results are discussed in terms of a schema activation perspective tempered by the observation that outlines seem to provide readers with knowledge of text organization, an outcome not seen for headings. An alternative accounting for the results based on using outlines and headings as retrieval cues also is offered.

The effects of depression on structural aspects of the recall of prose.

Investigated depressed patients' memory for stories. This indicated that although normal Ss showed particularly good recall for units central to the structure of the story, this did not hold for depressed Ss. In contrast, effects of centrality were comparable in high- and low-IQ Ss and effects of imageability of story units were comparable in both depressed and normal Ss. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that depressed patients do not use structure to organize stories when encoding them. A failure to identify central aspects of material and selectively recall them is likely to be a handicap to everyday functioning.

Age differences in processing expository and narrative text.

A dual-task procedure was used to examine the effects of text genre on prose processing, comprehension, and recall in 20 young (18-33 years) and 20 old (65-80 years) adults. Response latencies on a secondary task provided an index of cognitive capacity used in reading narrative and expository passages. Both groups recalled more of narratives than of expository passages, although old subjects recalled less than young. Also, the narrative protocols of both age groups showed a greater difference for recall of main ideas as compared to details. Age differences in the pattern of text genre effects were found on measures of comprehension, capacity utilization, and processing efficiency. It appears that the narrative genre facilitated most measures of performance and partially compensated for some limitations in the older group.

THE EFFECTS OF AGE ON RECALL OF INFORMATION FROM A SIMULATED TELEVISION NEWS BROADCAST

The recall of factual information from a news broadcast was assessed in 267 adults who were young, middle‐aged, or elderly. Participants listened to a 6‐min simulated news program, and at the conclusion of the program were asked 25 factual questions related to the content of the broadcast. A significant age effect was noted, with older adults recalling less information than the younger‐aged groups. Performance on this task positively correlated with a measure of prose recall and self‐reports of everyday memory. Results suggest that a computer‐simulated task may be a useful medium for assessing everyday memory performance.

USING TEXT STRUCTURE TO IMPROVE OLDER ADULTS' RECALL OF IMPORTANT MEDICAL INFORMATION

This study makes use of the “levels effect” in prose recall to increase older adults' recall of important medical information. Seventy older adults (over 65) read and recalled two passages containing medical information about hypertension and arthritis. Half of the adults read the passages in which the text structure had been revised so that target ideas (identified as important by physician consultants) were located at the highest levels of the content structure. Recall of target ideas, details, and total number of ideas were investigated. Results showed an increase in recall of target ideas for the revised passages. Education, medical condition, and age also affected recall to differing degrees depending on the measure studied. The results indicate that older adults remain sensitive to differences in prose structure and that their memory for important information can be improved by use of principles developed with younger subject groups.

Use of computer-presented games with memory-impaired stroke patients

The present study reports on the use of computer-presented games, designed to retrain memory abilities, with memory-impaired stroke patients. Eleven patients underwent a six-week treatment course consisting of practice on computerized games for 40 minutes a day, up to a maximum of four times a week. The patients were assessed on objective memory tasks before and after treatment. Seven patients showed improvements of one standard deviation or more on at least one of the outcome measures, but as a group significant improvement was found only on the immediate recall form of the Prose Recall task. It appears that specific memory skills are learned as a result of treatment, but these skills generalize poorly to untrained memory tasks. The patients' patterns of cognitive deficits affect performance and this type of retraining may not be suitable for all stroke survivors. The study emphasizes the need for evaluation of computer-based cognitive rehabilitation.

RELATION OF EVERYDAY ACTIVITIES OF ADULTS TO THEIR PROSE RECALL PERFORMANCE

This study is concerned with the connection between the everyday activities of adults of different ages and their performance on a prose recall task. Participants were 54 adults, 18 in each of three age groups (18‐32, 40‐54, over 62). Written recall of two 388‐word expository prose passages was used for the prose recall measure. For the activities measures, a structured diary form was used to collect information. Regression analyses showed that the demographic variables of age, education, and verbal ability were the best predictors of prose recall. Total time spent reading and other reading variables were also significantly correlated with recall. In multiple regression analyses a set of prose‐related activities made a significant contribution to explaining the variance in prose recall. The results provide limited support for a “practice” model which argues that performance on prose recall tasks is related to the amount of practice that adults get in similar activities in everyday life.

Disabled readers' processing of prose: Do any processes change because of intervention?

A multiple baseline design was implemented to address the questions, “Do qualitative changes in reported strategies occur during treatment and does strategy instruction concurrently influence a conceptually related task?” The dependent measure for the prose recall task was the number of idea units recalled, while the number of facts comprehended during silent reading sessions assessed transfer effects. “Thinking aloud protocols” were used to identify cognitive processes during prose recall. The results suggested that a qualitative shift in verbal strategy reports occurred across training sessions. The introduction of cognitive training (visual and verbal mapping of idea units) increased the recall of prose compared to the baseline conditions, although concurrent effects on reading comprehension tasks were minimal. It was assumed that unstable cognitive processes during prose recall, as well as nonequivalent mental processes between the two tasks, accounted for the poor transfer of training effects.

Literacy as Multidimensional: Locating Information and Reading Comprehension

A contrast is proposed between the two literacy constructs of reading comprehension and locating information in text. A pragmatic approach to identifying important classes of literacy tasks reveals that locating information is prevalent in school and work. This process is a form of strategic reading that differs from reading comprehension or recall of prose by being more goal directed, more selective in the use of text, and less dependent on declarative knowledge. The process of locating text information requires: formulation of a goal, selection of a category of text for inspection, extraction of relevant details, and recycling to obtain solutions. Relationships of locating information in text to models of problem solving, studying, and reading comprehension are discussed and research implications are suggested.

Increasing Prose Recall of Learning Disabled and Reading Disabled Students Via Spatial Organizers

ABSTRACTSixty-eight learning disabled and reading disabled junior high school-aged youths participated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, learners were required to study either a spatially organized illustration or a randomized (list format) illustration prior to hearing a related prose passage. Illustrations contained both mimetic (representational) symbols and referent labels. In Experiment 2, learners were required to study either spatially organized illustrations with or without mimetic symbols or randomized illustrations with or without mimetic symbols. All students were asked to recall the passage information and reconstruct the illustration. Results from both experiments indicated that spatially organized illustrations facilitated recall of related prose content and that the mimetic symbol illustration groups outperformed the labels groups. Results are discussed in terms of instructional variables for mildly handicapped youths.

Syntactic complexity and elderly adults' prose recall.

Elderly adults in their 70s and 80s and middle-aged adults in their 40s and 50s recalled a series of paragraphs made up of single-clause sentences and sentences with right-branching or left-branching embedded or subordinate clauses. Overall, the middle-aged adults recalled 65% of the propositions regardless of syntactic form. While the elderly adults recalled 43% of the propositions from the single-clause sentences, they recalled 60% of the propositions from the right-branching clauses but only 22% of the propositions from the left-branching clauses. These results, in conjunction with prior research on elderly adults' production and imitation of complex syntactic constructions, demonstrate age-related changes in syntactic processing.

Decisions following reading and bias in recall

The role of decision making in biasing recall of prose was examined. Both making a decision subsequent to reading and encountering an experimenter-provided decision resulted in recall biased in the direction of the decision. Conditions in which subjects made their own decisions, however, resulted in greater levels of decision-congruent recall than did conditions in which the experimenters furnished decisions to subjects. In addition, the level of recall of incongruent information in the subject-made decisions conditions was as high as the level of congruent information observed in the experimenter-provided decisions conditions. A memory-restructuring model, suggested by Dellarosa and Bourne (1984), accounts for the results if it is true that greater elaboration of both decision-congruent and decision-incongruent information during subject-made decisions occurs.